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“Think I saw one in the workshop. We’ll get to that tomorrow.” Jonah stretches his arms above his head as he saunters over to me. “Start with this.” He tops up my wine to brimming. “And this.” He flips open the lid on a pizza box—the one without cheese, for me—that we grabbed at the only pizza shop in Trapper’s Crossing on our way home. “I’ll haul the mattress upstairs and we can make our bed. And then we’ll crack that bottle of champagne and relax. Tomorrow, we’ll start dealing with everything else.”
“You make it sound so easy.” My arm feels heavy as I reach for my drink. My mental exhaustion has drained me.
He gently clinks the neck of his bottle against my glass. “It is.”
“I’m glad you think so.” I plaster on an innocent smile and pat the extra-large yellow rubber gloves on the counter. “Because these are for you, to scrub the drunk-man pee off that bathroom floor up there.”
He slips my glass from my hand and scoops me into his arms. “Told you, Calla, I don’t care. I have you and my planes, we have this place …” His eyes are bright and wistful as they roam the beams in the pitched ceiling. “We have it all.”
Chapter Eleven
“What did the contract say?”
“I’d have to go back and check.”
“Well, you must be able to do something.” My mother’s astonished tone carries well over the phone’s speaker, even from thousands of miles away. “Bill him for a cleaning company or for your time. At the very least, you need to complain to the agent. Didn’t they inspect it before you arrived?”
I stifle my groan, knowing I’m about to get an earful as I admit, “There was no agent. It was a private sale.” A lawyer in Wasilla managed all the paperwork—the contract, the title and lien search, and a bunch of other things I don’t care to know about.
“No agent!” She makes a sound. “Well, no wonder!” To say my mother is unimpressed that we haven’t heeded her warnings and rented rather than bought is a glaring understatement.
“I’m sure it saved them some money on commission fees, Susan.” Simon’s typically calm voice is a challenge. I can picture them squaring off in the living room—my mom with her face painted and her hair coiffed, spearing Simon with an exasperated look; Simon, with his afternoon cup of tea in hand and a BBC special on mute in the background, his eyebrows arched in a “she’s a grown woman, living with a grown man, making her own decisions and mistakes” way.
“We did save money. Phil knocked the price down by six percent,” I confirm, reaching deep into the cabinet with a gloved hand to fish out something metal from the corner. I frown at the manual hand beater that appears. Likely forgotten about decades ago. One for the donation box. “Whatever. It’s not the end of the world. The upstairs is completely cleared out and we’re making good headway down here.” Four days in and we’ve turned over decades’ worth of household goods and sentimental junk from almost every cupboard. Our main floor looks like a hoarder’s paradise but there’s a system to the chaos—boxes line the narrow hallway, waiting for Jonah to haul burnables to the fire; items worth keeping are piled on the kitchen counters and the small dining table, for washing and organizing later; donations for the local Salvation Army fill the living room floor. Everything else goes straight into a black plastic bag. There are seventeen bags of trash and counting.
“And the old owner doesn’t want any of it?” My mother can’t seem to get past her abhorrence.
“Nope.” I climb to my feet and head for the living room, where we’ve pushed aside the floppy couch and scuffed side tables to make room. “Jonah called him yesterday. He said to throw out whatever we don’t want.”
“That’s bizarre.” My mom’s sigh carries over the speaker. “Where’s Jonah, anyway?”
“At the fire pit.” He’s been out there since the sky began to lighten this morning. The plume of smoke that rises is dark and thick and full of ash, and every time he comes in to swap an empty box for a full one, he carries with him the scent of charred paper and burnt wood.
Not that I can complain. I’ve been cleaning in the same clothes for the past four days—a baggy sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants that I found in a dresser full of women’s clothes in the bedroom. They’re now coated in grime, dust, and cleaner.
“Have you had a chance to photograph anything good yet?” Simon asks, with a glimmer of excitement. He once admitted that, at one point in his life, he dreamed of being a nature photographer. My own skills with the camera—his Canon that I have claimed as my own—are in part thanks to his amateur teachings.
I smile, silently thanking him for shifting off the topic of this house. “No. Jonah said he saw a fox running along the tree line, down by the hangar, but I’ve been too busy inside cleaning to do much of anything else.” I haven’t even pulled my camera out. Diana has been harassing me to share something online, but I haven’t wrapped my head around this disaster to decide how I want to frame it for spectators.
“Don’t get too close for the sake of a picture,” Mom warns. “Even a moose can turn on you.”
“I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about with Calla,” Simon says dryly.
We chatter for another five minutes before Mom signals an end to the conversation. “Well, I guess we should let you get back to it.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna tackle these valances next.” I stretch my arms over my head, wincing with the ache in my lower back and shoulders. I long for a long, hot soak in the bathtub.
“Ugh. Valances. I’ve never understood the point.”
“Right?”
“Say hi to Jonah for us.”
“I will. And figure out when you’re coming!”
We end the call as Jonah’s voice carries in.
“… refuses to go back there if he’s there. Bandit seems okay with him so far, at least.” The front door creaks open.
